About

Are you ready to stop waiting?

Is it time for you to start feeling ALIVE?

Too short for waiting for the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the month, maybe even waiting out the rest of your life.

It’s not a dress rehearsal. There is no rerun or second chance. You don’t have time to wait before you start living your life.

I believe that Life can feel like a grand adventure, when you know what makes you feel ALIVE.

And I want it to feel like that for you.

That’s why I work with smart middle aged women like you helping you work out what lights you up so you can live life feeling ALIVE, and move into the next stage of your life with purpose and enthusiasm.

You know, at each new stage of Life we need to draw a new map for the unfamiliar territory we are entering. The old one can only take you so far.

Midlife is a time when you’ve achieved a lot of the big goals that you set earlier in life and you are looking at the years ahead and wondering ‘what now?’ Maybe you have realised that you set these goals by default and never thought much about what you wanted from life. (I know! I’ve been in that exact same position. )

Now is a perfect time to work out what matters to you, to get still and listen to what you yearn for and to use that to help you draw a new map.

You bring a richness of wisdom and experience as you journey into the second half of your life.

But you can feel anxious, unsure of what you really want or scared to make changes. And so you get stuck waiting…………..

Waiting for things to magically change.

But you don’t have to do it on your own.

Hi, I’m Derrin

I’m a life coach helping middle aged women find their purpose and live with enthusiasm. I love working personally and with small groups of women, I write, I love being outdoors in nature and walking really long distances. There is so much to learn travelling at walking pace. I’m a passionate grower of vegies and all my life I’ve been doing creative things of one sort of another.

In my work I draw on the many life lessons that unfolded walking 900km across Spain (and on the other long distance walks in NZ, Portugal and Australia since atfirst taste in Spain), as well as my experience as a teacher, a gifted education consultant, an author, and my creative skills and experiences. All those things come together as I help women navigate change, harness being present and work out what they need to feel ALIVE and embrace this adventure called Life.

How did I get here?

In early 2013 a friend and I walked 900km across Spain following the Pilgrim’s Trail to Santiago de Compostela, and then further on to Muxere and Finisterre at the ‘end of the earth’ where we sat and watched the sun setting over the ocean.

It wasn’t our first long walk, nor has it been our last. We’d covered 170km at the start of the Pilgrims Trail 18 months earlier. It was an adventure to mark our 50th birthdays. An adventure that I embarked on spontaneously over a cup of tea, effectively hitching a ride on my longest time friend’s dream. And I am soo glad I did. It has changed my life.

While it wasn’t a religious pilgrimage for me, I embraced the opportunity to be immersed in nature (including the unseasonably cold, wet Spring we experienced) and pay attention to the small things that are often lost in the blur of daily life. Slow travel is a truly unique experience.

We carried everything we needed on our backs and walking each day, regardless of the weather or how we felt, we saw first-hand how taking consistent action can see you achieve anything you set out to. Even walking an incredibly long way. (you can read more about our journey here). We also embraced uncertainty as we had no accommodation booked once we set out, we found a place to stay each day when we had walked far enough.

I returned home keen to keep hold of the feeling of spaciousness and calm we had experienced being surrounded so closely by nature and moving slowly and with purpose. I reassessed, changed direction, cleared space and focused on further developing my interest in what makes a purposeful life. I read widely and studied further.

There were also times when I got scared, when I doubted myself and let fear get the better of me. More long walks helped me become surer that I was on the path I was meant to be on.

I couldn’t do it all on my own though. I sought out people who could help me stay on track. I talked thought my concerns, I reflected. My coach gently guided me back when I wanted to turn away. No journey through life is straight forward.

Every ‘pilgrimage’ requires a leap of faith at some point, that you believe enough in yourself. And having made it through, I can now bring all of that learning, my insights from our long walks, as well as all my other knowledge, skills and experiences to help you on your path, to help you draw a map for the next stage of your life.

I believe that Life can feel like a grand adventure when we know what gives our lives meaning. And I want you to feel that tingling aliveness too that comes from navigating change and embracing life.

If you want to find out more about how to feel like that, get in touch.

A little more about me

When I arrived home from Spain and was reassessing my life, I also spent some time addressing my ‘textiles deficit’. In the busyness of life and running a business I had neglected this aspect of life which was so important to me. Nature helped out here too.

My love of nature is not new. As a young child my grandfather walked me through bush land identifying the trees and flowers as we went. I rediscovered how strongly nature draws me a few years ago when we bought a beautifully treed piece of farm land an hour from Perth in Western Australia and, spending our weekends there, began to observe the change of seasons in a way that was hard to do in the city. We experience very hot dry summers so learning how to maintain a garden and grow vegetables when we aren’t there to water daily has provided some challenges. Problem solving and experimenting over the last few years has now resulted in a very productive veggie garden!

As a life-long maker and textiles artist, I have been using the abundant leaf fall from the eucalypts on our property and scraps from the garden (which eventually wind up in our compost pile) in my work as well. It’s sort of ‘nose to tail’ vegetables and plants.

In another lifetime I was an educator working with children and their parents and published a couple of books along the way. In my coaching work now, I now draw on skills I developed as an educator and consultant empowering families to proactively meet their child’s unique needs, in helping women identify their purpose and design a life they love. The Desire Map workshops are a powerful tool in working out what really lights you up and using that to guide your decisions.

By now you know I love nature. And making things.

I also love

The smell of rain, especially when it has been hot and dry for ages.

Sunshine. And sunsets through the trees. Or over the ocean. That’s good too.

Licorice tea

The north of Italy. Varenna is a favourite spot, on the edge of Lake Como.

I’m not into breakfast in bed but I do love home cooked meals, prepared with love. Especially when the vegies are straight from the garden.

Working with silk

Reading and learning and then passing on what I know to others.

Pilates – it was great preparation for our long walk and my body works so much better for it that it is now a regular part of my week.

The music of Leonard Cohen. My daughter needed a chaperone to a concert when she was in her teens and thought I might enjoy it. She was right. We’ve been to several more since.

And of course, my family. That would be my husband and two daughters, both young adults now. The cat moved in with one daughter when she moved out of home. Sometimes she still purrs when she sees me.

Categories

Hi, I’m Derrin

I’m a Life Coach, a walker, a writer, a creative craftswoman, passionate grower of vegies and Desire Map facilitator.
I coach women to help them work out what it is that lights them up and gives meaning to their life. I’d love to help you feel ALIVE and embrace this grand adventure called Life.

Why a Shell?

On our 900km Camino de Santiago de Compostela across Spain, my friend and I were guided by scallop shells.
The lines on the shell seem to represent the different routes through life, all focussing on purpose and meaning. For me this shell symbolises transformation and change, new insights, deeper understandings.
Life, like a pilgrimage, is an inner journey just as much as an outer one. The shell guides us in the right direction.